My IE7 is Playing Up

Damn! It drove me nuts!

My Internet Explorer IE7 has decided that opening a link in a new tab is evil. It kept deterring me from doing it. Everytime I right-clicked a link to open in a new tab, it created the tab but never opened the page. And when I clicked on the new tab, it showed a frozen display. Tried to go back to my current browser, it hanged!!! Since every damn thing hanged, the close button obviously wouldn't work. I went to the Task Manager, but it did not show any active IE application. Then I attempted to log off or shut down, the 'program is not responding' dialog showed up. It was pain in the butt.

To sum up : The IE7 hangs discriminantly on opening new tab or browser. This has happened to me since two weeks ago. I just haven't got time to sort it out.

Today, I was a bit lax and decided to do something involving tranferring data which required the opening of a number of tabs/browsers at the same time. It just wouldn't let me do it no matter what. I was so sick of it. I hate technology, sometimes. It is just frustrating. You spend so much money on it, hoping to make life easier, then it crashes...over and over again. It sucks!

I am an absolute idiot, in terms of computer/IT. I was torn between whether to delete the IE7 and re-install, or opt for an alternative web browser, Firefox perhaps? But, I was scared to lose my feeds, my favourites, etc. Eventually, I visited the Microsoft forum. To my surprise, thousands of people all over the world encountered this problem. Ha, I am not alone!

Thanks to an ingenious Burtie who came up with a solution. I tried it, and everything went back to normal, i.e., I can now open a dozen of tabs simultaneously, wow-ho!

And the cure is : Disable all the 'Window Live Toolbar' plug-ins.

Apparently, it was caused by the recent Automatic Updates by Microsoft. There is a conflict between Toolbars and the latest IE updates. Some threads even said they have similar problem with Googles and Yahoo! toolbar as well. Hey, Mr. Gates, please in future ensure your staff do things properly-la, no more trial and error at the expense of your customers' time, money and sanity.

Must seriously contemplate setting Firefox as the default browser. Emm.